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Year after year, pets are given as a Christmas gift because they are “just so cute!” Honestly, who can argue that logic? What people seem to forget is that while your sweet, six year old cousin Claire is begging for a puppy, it won’t be Claire doing all of the work to take care of the puppy. Mommy and daddy have to clean up after it, and pay for the cost of vet bills, food, collars, leashes, dog licenses…the list goes on and on. Another thing that people seem to forget is that puppies don’t stay puppies forever, and kids may lose interest in them once their new furry friend loses its baby face. It is wrong to place an animal in a home just for it to be abandoned a few short months later. A pet is a family member, not a toy that can be tossed away when the child gets tired of it.

Why am I bringing this up? I go to school in an area with a huge population of stray animals, and the number of strays seen around campus always seems to go up around January, February, and March. Why? People don’t want to pay the drop off fee at shelters, so they dump their child’s Christmas gift from Aunt Katie and Uncle Jim. If they didn’t pay to get the pet fixed, this brings up a huge array of problems. In theory, one female dog that is not spayed can produce 67,000 dogs through her and her puppies. Do you see my point? Sixty-seven THOUSAND dogs, when there are already over three million dogs in shelters throughout the United States. Long story short, over one million animals are euthanized in shelters in one month in the United States. Please, think before purchasing an animal as a pet, because if that puppy that Claire wants ends up being dumped on the streets, she could end up starving to death, being picked up by an animal shelter and euthanized in the shelter, hit by a car, or producing thousands of other dogs that would be unwanted.

This breaks my heart to say, because I think every (domesticated) animal deserves a home. The harsh reality needs to be known, though.

What brings this up? My lovely roommate and I came across another stray puppy today (the third in three weeks). Two were males and one was a female…and neither male was fixed. These sweet dogs were all homeless, and the males were able to reproduce and create more homeless dogs (and on another topic entirely, larger dogs can breed with coyotes and create a dangerous mix). Today’s stray was incredibly sweet, and he’d hop right on your lap and give kisses. I like to think positive and say “Okay, he’s pretty clean, and he’s so friendly, there’s no way he was born a stray. Perhaps he could have just slipped his collar” but he may have been dumped if he was too much work for some families. And no animal deserves to be dumped on the streets.